Trending at Hallandale Beach Blog: WBAL-TV's Lowell Melser's consistently crisp, thorough & detailed reporting at the George Huguely V murder trial in Charlottesville of Cockeysville native Yeardley Love

WBAL-TV News, Baltimore video: Breaking News: Correspondent Lowell Melser reports on the details surrounding the jury in the George Huguely V trial handing down a 26-year sentence in Charlottesville, VA for the Second-degree Murder of Yeardley Love. February 22, 2012.


Trending at Hallandale Beach Blog: WBAL-TV's Lowell Melser's consistently crisp, thorough & detailed reporting at the George Huguely V murder trial in Charlottesville of Cockeysville native Yeardley Love.

Whether detailing the ins-and-outs of the voir dire process, the Huguely defense team's strategy -and even the health of the defense attorneys- the emotional and evidentiary highs-and-lows of each day before a judge who works long hours and expects as much from the 12-member jury, or revealing the heartbreaking testimony of the Love family, Lowell Melser's reporting from the hometown of UVA, the school my niece currently attends and the one that Yeardley Love had grown-up dreaming of playing for, and as a young woman had grown to love representing for four happy years, has been first-rate and exemplary, a real credit to WBAL.

I've watched Melser's reports since before the trail started, which is of such great interest to me as well as to folks in the greater Baltimore community for the myriad reasons I've mentioned here in my February 6th post, titled, Yeardley Love in our thoughts: UVA & Charlottesville, extended UVA family & U.S. Lacrosse community are bracing themselves for the graphic details/photos that'll emerge in George Huguely V's murder trial starting Monday
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/yeardley-love-in-our-thoughts-uva.html


I had really hoped to have been able to post a few days worth of Melser's stories each weekend of the trial here for you to see, but logistically, that just wasn't going to work out, given how often Google Chrome has been crashing at the worst possible times, making what should've otherwise been a 20-30 minute operation take 90 maddening minutes, instead.
Sorry about that.


Ashley Robertson in The Cavalier Daily in Charlottesville captured the gaping hole in the souls of Yeardley's family about as well as you could, something you probably never saw in whatever TV news story you saw about the verdict or sentencing, but which is important to know:

Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman called Love’s mother Sharon and older sister Lexie to testify about the impact of Yeardley’s death on their family.

Few eyes in the courtroom stayed dry and multiple jurors needed tissues as Sharon Love described losing her daughter just five years after the death of her husband.

“Every year that goes by, I’m afraid I’m forgetting little pieces about her,” Sharon Love said between sobs. “[The pain] never goes away. You just pick yourself up and try to do the best you can for Yeardley.”

Lexie Love’s testimony also evoked tears as she described the emotional pain she suffered from losing a sister she talked to “at least once a day.”

“I’ve never wanted something so bad in my life as to see her again… it physically hurts,” Lexie Love said. “It’s like something’s missing — there’s a huge hole that will always be there and nothing’s going to fill it.”

It just breaks your heart all over again.
At least it did mine.
Yeardley Love and her family are still in our thoughts.


See the whole article here:


The Cavalier Daily 
The Verdict
By Ashley Robertson, Section Editor 
February 24, 2012
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2012/02/24/the-verdict/


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http://www.wbaltv.com/index.html 


One Love Foundation: http://www.joinonelove.org/

Mike Flanagan's death leads Ken Rosenthal to reminisce about what "The Oriole Way" once meant; WBAL-TV continues to get heat for Gerry Sandusky story

Fox Sports video: Fox Sports national baseball correspondent Ken Rosenthal, formerly a hugely popular columnist for the Baltimore Sun -and constant presence in the Washington, D.C. radio scene as well thru his frequent appearances- discussed on Wednesday night what Oriole pitching great Mike Flanagan meant to devout Oriole fans and how he exemplified "The Oriole Way" of doing things, an ethos missing in Baltimore for so many years that when I bring it up, people look at me like I'm a dinosaur.

http://youtu.be/kGadVyXI9Pc

For those of you who only know Ken Rosenthal from his work on Fox-TV game broadcasts, Ken is a very classy guy and a very talented writer who knows how to get to the heart of a story and share the context in an interesting and informative way.

Which puts him on a very short list.

If you don't think I shared an email or two -or dozen- with Ken while he was at The Sun...

Years before it was being written about just about everywhere, I told Ken about litigator and Orioles majority owner Peter Angelos' interest in pursuing the link between the use of cell phones and brain damage/cancer, based on reports coming out of Europe.

Rick Dempsey: He played 'The Oriole Way':

THE HERO!

Rick Dempsey, Baltimore's World Series MVP, October 24th, 1983

I could've predicted this criticism below in Baltimore Sun's TV critic David Zurawik's column Thursday, early Thursday morning when I sent my previous email with the WBAL video with Gerry Sandusky.

And guess what, he doesn't even link to it.

http://youtu.be/ayBjp9r7fH8

WBAL put the video on their YouTube Channel, which I subscribe to, but they made it un-embedded so that they keep it as exclusive. They have NOT placed any of their news stories about Mike Flanagan from Thursday on the Channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/wbal

Can't help but wonder if that's due to laziness or because of station management caving-in to dopey fans like the ones below calling and complaining.

Fans who even in the year 2011 think that because they see someone on TV or have seen them in person, that they REALLY know them.

You'd think that the cases of O.J. and Tiger Woods would've enlightened people about this ridiculously naive approach, but then even when I was going to 25 games a year at Camden Yards from my home in Arlington County, VA, for a decade straight after it opened, often getting home around 1:30 a.m. during the week, parochial Baltimore locals were STILL preciously saying that the D.C./Northern Virginia fans were "ruining things."

No, actually devout fans like me saved the franchise from irrelevancy and made the Orioles a big-market team (in a small market) by selling-out that stadium day-after-day, night-after-night.

But even that financial alchemy couldn't prevent Angelos & Sons from micro-managing and ruining a good thing, firing Davey Johnson shortly after he was named AL Manager of the Year, and they haven't been the same since.

(Davey Johnson being the last MLB batter to ever face Koufax, in 1966 World Series, when 'the Baby Birds' swept the Dodgers.)

The direction of the Baltimore Orioles -their glorious past, absymal present and rather uncertain future- both on-the-field and up in the B&O Warehouse, where Angelos & Co. brook no dissenting opinions, will be the subject of even more posts here in the future.

My "THANKS CAL" BUTTON FROM 2001

Cal Ripken Jr.

The ONLY new WBAL video on Flanagan storyline is this 29 second interview with former O's pitcher Tippy Martinez. http://www.wbaltv.com/video/28978855/detail.html

Pathetically, on their own website, as of Midnight, 2 of the 3 news stories about it are NOT theirs! The third?

The aforementioned 29-second video.

Thursday night on MASN, which I watch on DirecTV from here in South Florida, even though much of the programming is blacked-out here, after midnight, rather than show the scheduled repeat of the Twins at O's game, they replayed the Orioles' last home game at Memorial Stadium from October 6th, 1991, against the Tigers.

(A game that was commemorated by the Orioles thru seemingly manufacturing a million green or black plastic soft drink cups embossed in gold that were used that last series at Memorial Stadium. I had about five of them when I left a game against the Tigers that last week. But they were still being used at Orioles Park at Camden Yards so much into the next year that after a while it became an inside joke to Oriole fans.)

In that last game, Mike Flanagan came in with one out in the top of the 9th with O's trailing 7-1 -he struck out the two batters he faced.

And left to a standing ovation.

I taped the show and will endeavor to post some screenshots I took of Mike Flanagan here later.

I'll also go thru my Orioles stuff I have on hand and see what I might have that might interest you.

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Baltimore Sun

Z on TV

WBAL-TV stands behind Sandusky report on Flanagan and reasons for suicide

But police investigation offers different explanation for Flanagan's act

By David Zurawik

The Baltimore Sun

10:47 p.m. EDT, August 25, 2011

WBAL-TV is standing behind its Wednesday-night report by sportscaster Gerry Sandusky linking the suicide of former Baltimore Orioles pitcher and executive Mike Flanagan to him being "despondent" over being perceived as having failed the team and fans during his time in the O's front office.

Read the rest of the post at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/z-on-tv-blog/bal-wbaltv-stands-behind-gerry-sandusky-report-on-flanagan-suicide-20110825,0,6876360.story

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I will try to find out what Beltway-area baseball maven Phil Wood, late of MASN, whose WTEM radio show I listened to every Saturday morning for years -like all my friends did, too- is saying about the Flanagan story-line all of this and share that with you over the weekend

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/blog/

http://www.youtube.com/user/wbal

Mike Flanagan: An Oriole Great When the 'Oriole Way' Still Meant Something; those days never seemed farther back in time than right now

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bs-md-co-flanagan-house-death-20110824,0,4675762.story

August 23, 2011 11:51 pm

Wow!

WBAL-TV is reporting this: "sources confirmed that Flanagan took his own life “despondent over what he considered a false perception from a community he loved of his role in the team’s prolonged failure”

WBAL-TV video: WBAL-TV Sports Director Gerry Sandusky -a former Miami sportscaster and son of the former Dolphin assistant coach, John Sandusky- reports the tragic news:

http://www.wbaltv.com/video/28969408/detail.html

http://youtu.be/ayBjp9r7fH8

I found out this terrible news just after 11 p.m. Wednesday night and am still in a bit of a shock while I try my best to find a Baltimore-area radio station on the Internet that is actually talking about this instead of running syndicated fare, like WBAL is, running Yahoo Sports instead.

Really.

Jesus, what ARE they thinking?

This is just like what happened after the UM fired Randy Shannon, and every single Miami sports radio station kept their syndicated programming on rather than put the plug on that and put their own people on the air to let listeners talk about it.

Yes, that's the news media ethos down here in a nutshell.

I've tried finding something on MASN, DirecTV 640, but there was nothing.

Jim Palmer spoke about his friend and teammate:

http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110824&content_id=23719698&vkey=news_bal&c_id=bal

See also:

http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2011_08_24_balmlb_minmlb_1&mode=recap&c_id=bal

I hardly know what to say other than... Mike Flanagan: An Oriole Great When the 'Oriole Way' Still Meant Something; those days never seemed farther back in time than right now.

See this photo below...

Hendricks remembered

(Sun photo by Gene Sweeney Jr. / December 29, 2005)

Orioles Executive Vice President for Baseball Operations Mike Flanagan and his wife Alex leave the memorial service for Elrod Hendricks.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bal-hendricksphotof1229,0,5308516.photo

The event above was YET ANOTHER disgraceful Oriole moment of SO MANY over the past dozen years, with only one then-current player showing up for Elrod Hendricks' funeral, Melvin Mora.

My friends all over the country and I were absolutely LIVID over this and yet the Oriole ballplayers then were totally f-ing oblivious to what that show of disrespect to someone who had bled for this team for over four decades meant to everyone who ever cared about the Orioles.

If I'd had a blog then, I'd have positively crucified the players, one-by-one.

And yet Peter Angelos & Sons STILL walk the earth among us... where's the fairness or silver lining in that?

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http://www.baltimoresun.com/

http://www.wbaltv.com/